inside story

IN THIS ISSUE:

2 New Summer Intensives Program

3 Dean’s Corner: Focus on Faculty

4 Spanning the Globe: 2014 Summer Internships

5 Richard Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program

CUNY’s J-School Accreditation

6 Alumni News from the Classes of 2007-2013

8 The Diversity Initiative

Stuck on the tarmac for three hours on her way to the West Coast in February, Dean Sarah Bartlett decided to plow through a draft of Professor Jeff Jarvis’ latest treatise, an e-book entitled “Geeks Bearing Gifts.” She found the picture he painted of the industry’s future so compelling that she concluded a fresh approach to our curriculum

was needed. Thus the concept of a master’s degree in social journalism was born. For the rest of that trip, Bartlett and Jarvis tried out the concept on West Coast tech titans.

It was well received, so much so that Reid Hoffman, the chairman of LinkedIn and a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, agreed to seed the program with a $200,000 gift. Several weeks later in Miami, Alberto Ibarguen, the president and CEO of the Knight Foundation, offered to match Hoffman’s gift.

The faculty response was equally enthusiastic. When we learned that the only way to meet all the internal and external hurdles in time to launch the new degree in 2015 was to develop the entire curriculum in two weeks, the faculty rose to the challenge.

Ten syllabi were written, emergency Curriculum Committee and Governance Council meet-ings were held, and the CUNY central office that reviews new

Total Enrollment 85 students

Male 42%

Female 58%

Underrepresented Students 42%

Average Age 26

Age Range 20-50

Average Undergraduate GPA 3.3

Non-New York State 39% Residents (includes non-U.S. citizens)

Class of 2015

insidestoryWWW.JOURNALISM.CUNY.EDU FALL 2014 Vol. 8, No. 1

CUNY J-School Prepares to Launch Cutting-Edge Master’s in Social Journalism

Dr. Carrie Brown with Professor Jeff Jarvis at a social journalism symposium in September

continued on page 2

Ravitch Fellows with their benefactor (p. 5)

FALL 2014 1

Intern Malorie Marshall, left, with our Associate Director of Admissions, Max Patiño, at WWNO, New Orleans (p. 4)

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programs accommodated our fast-track re-quest. Moving from the idea to approval by the CUNY Board of Trustees took just 20 weeks, a miracle by academic standards. The degree be-came official when the New York State Educa-tion Department approved it on Oct. 15.

“If journalism education has any hope of keeping up with the explosive trends in our in-dustry, we have to learn to be extremely nimble while maintaining high academic standards,” said Dean Bartlett. “This experience proves that it can be done.”

The new 33-credit degree will launch in Jan-uary with a cohort of about 12 students, build-ing over time to about 40 a year. The three-se-mester program has a built-in summer session, so students will finish after 12 months.

Unlike traditional journalism programs that focus on journalists as content producers, this degree starts with communities (whether they are geographic or topic- or event-driven), their information needs and how journalists can best serve them.

Social-J students will learn how to use social media tools to engage deeply with communi-ties. They will also become adept at collecting and analyzing data that communities need, presenting it in compelling and shareable ways.

In their final semester, they will work with their chosen community in a practicum, as well as take concentrated business courses to strengthen their entrepreneurial skills. We be-lieve there will be strong demand for the gradu-ates of this program, as we see many news or-ganizations and online companies adding jobs with “engagement” as a key skill.

To oversee the new program, we have hired Dr. Carrie Brown, who has been a leader in this burgeoning field. She was previously an associ-ate professor at the University of Memphis and most recently was named national Educator of the Year by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s News-paper and Online Division. A pioneer in changing journalism education, Carrie has developed and taught new courses in social media and entre-preneurial journalism at Memphis. n

Social Journalism continued from page 1

“If journalism education has

any hope of keeping up with

the explosive trends in our industry,

we have to learn to be extremely

nimble whilemaintaining

high academicstandards.”

—Dean Bartlett

For the first time ever, the newsroom at the CUNY J-School was filled with students during the summertime. Sixty participants, many of them international students from as far away as China, Brazil, Nigeria, Austria and South Korea, signed up for one of two two-week “boot camps” to get intensive training in reporting, writing and digital tools.

Thanks to Assistant Dean Stephen Dougherty’s efforts to lift this idea from our strategic plan and get it launched, our summer intensives have the potential to be an exciting new stream of revenue for the school.

And here’s the best part: Many participants told us they found the experience so valuable that they’re seriously considering applying to one of our master’s degree programs. Steve is already busy exploring some additional workshop programs for next summer with faculty who see this as an opportunity to dig more deeply into specialized topics. n

New Workshops in Reporting, Writing andDigital Tools Fill Classrooms in July

Our summer intensives have

the potential to be an exciting

new stream of revenue for the school.

Amy DunkinEditorinsidestory

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John Smock, Skyler ReidPhotographers

Nancy NovickDesigner

When I was interviewing for the dean’s job, I was asked whom I would like to recruit to the faculty if given the chance. The name I most often cited was Ta-Nehisi Coates, a national correspondent for The Atlantic whose work I had long admired.

One of the many joys of this position is that it gives me the opportunity to turn dreams into reality. After several early morning breakfast meetings, Ta-Nehisi accepted my offer to become a journalist-in-residence at the CUNY J-School, a position funded by a grant from an anonymous donor.

Fortunately for us, that was before he published “The Case for Reparations,” his powerful 15,000-word cover story in June that further burnished his reputation as one of this country’s most thoughtful – and thought-provoking – writers. This fall Ta-Nehisi is teaching a narrative writ-ing course. He will also host several high-profile journalism events for the school.

My good fortune did not stop there. Early in my tenure I approached Leonard Tow, whose foundation has so generously supported the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journal-ism, and asked if he would consider creating two Tow Professorships at the school. I was modeling my request on professorships he had established at Brooklyn and Barnard col-leges that conferred special recognition on teachers who demonstrated exceptional leader-ship in their fields. To my delight, the foundation approved my request, and I quickly named Bob Sacha and Yoruba Richen the first Tow Professors at the CUNY J-School.

Bob is widely admired by students for his innovative approach to visual storytelling and his engaging teaching style. A dedicated adjunct who nurtures his students long after they graduate, he has strengthened our curriculum with the creation of new courses, including his signature class, “Video Storytelling for the Web.” Among his many professional achieve-ments, this year he was part of the team at The Guardian that won a Pulitzer Prize and an Emmy Award for reporting on widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency.

Yoruba has also done much to strengthen the school’s visual journalism program. She is a singularly talented documentary maker whose work explores themes of race and eth-

nicity. Her most recent film, “The New Black,” offers a detailed portrait of the political battle in Maryland’s black churches over the gay marriage proposition. It has received numerous acco-lades, including a nomination for the NAACP Image Awards. She counts among the other awards for her work a Fulbright Scholar-ship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emmy and a duPont.

I have long thought that our full-time faculty members deserve extra recognition, too. They work tirelessly on behalf of their stu-dents and have generously helped build the J-School into the special place that it has become.

As a first step towards recognizing their extraordinary contribution, this year we created a Faculty Achievement Award to honor the professor who best exemplifies the values of our institution. These include a passion for student learning, a commitment to innovation, an insatiable curiosity about industry trends, collegiality, flexibility and humility.

The recipient of our first Faculty Achievement Award was Sandeep Junnarkar, director of the Interactive Journalism Program. As I said at the time of the presentation: “Sandeep’s commitment to the constant evolution of the interactive program, his dedication to his students, his recruitment of cutting-edge faculty and the generosity he has shown his col-leagues leave me in awe.”

What’s not to love about this new job? n

inside story VOL. 8, NO. 1 FALL 2014 3

Dean’s Corner • Focus on Faculty

Dean Sarah Bartlett

This fall Ta-Nehisi Coates

(photo below) is teaching a narrative

writing course. He will also

host several high-profile

journalism events in the fall

and spring.

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Dean, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

4 www.journalism.cuny.edu

Native People’s Magazine, PhoenixStefani Kim shot this photo

of an Apache coming-of-age ceremony in Arizona while interning for a publication

that covers the Native American community.

The New York TImes, Beijing The Cambodia Daily Kayle Hope Schnell worked on a video with Jonah Kessel of The Times’ Beijing bureau about China’s “leftover women” who are still unmarried in their late 20’s.

WWNO, New Orleans Malorie Marshall reported on a New Orleans bar owner who made his establishment smoke free.

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Summer Internships 2014

Colombia Reports, Medellin, Colombia Melanie Bencosme went the extra distance for her internship by parachuting over the mountains and

city of Medellin to capture video footage.

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inside story VOL. 8, NO. 1 FALL 2014 5

The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism has embarked upon a five-year effort to improve coverage of state and local fiscal issues, thanks to a major gift from New York civic leader Richard Ravitch.

The Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program provides fully funded fellowships for state and lo-cal reporters to attend one-week advanced training sessions at the CUNY J-School. The goal is to deepen reporters’ knowledge of issues such as budgeting, pensions, health care, debt and the municipal bond market and to help make their coverage more compelling.

Representatives from 10 newspapers and broadcast outlets based in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsyl-vania, New Jersey, New York and Texas arrived at the school in mid-August for the first of these sessions. A second week-long training will be held in January, and we’ll also be hosting an ad-ditional two-day seminar this year on topical fiscal issues.

Greg David, director of the J-School’s Business & Economics Reporting concentration and the former editor of Crain’s New York Business, oversees the program. Veteran business journalist William Glasgall, now director of state and local programs at the Volcker Alliance, served as senior adviser on the project.

Ravitch, New York’s former lieutenant governor, was instrumental in finding solutions to the New York State and New York City financial crises in the mid-1970s and is currently an adviser to the judge presiding over Detroit’s bankruptcy. n

Fiscal Reporting Program Funded by Richard RavitchAims to Sharpen Municipal Coverage

The Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC), the agency responsible for evaluating professional journalism pro-

grams at colleges and universities, granted ac-creditation to the CUNY Graduate School of Jour-nalism at a meeting in Arlington, Va., on May 2.

The ACEJMC affirmed the recommenda-tion for accreditation of three reviewers, led by Douglas Anderson, dean of the Penn State College of Communications. The site team spent three days on campus in the fall of 2013 examining every aspect of the CUNY graduate journalism program. In a report written at the end of the visit, the reviewers stated, “It defies logic that a graduate program in journalism

could come so far so fast.”The CUNY J-School opened in August 2006

under Founding Dean Stephen B. Shepard. It obtained this voluntary professional accredita-tion on its first attempt on top of the academic accreditation it has had from Day 1 from the Middle States Commission on Higher Educa-tion as part of The Graduate School and Uni-versity Center at CUNY.

The decision to give the CUNY J-School the ACEJMC stamp of approval completed a rigorous four-year self-assessment process in which the school had to present evidence of compliance with nine accrediting standards.The analysis was contained in a 268-page self-study report. n

Evaluator Accredits CUNY’s Graduate Program

Self-Study Report, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism | III

CUNY Graduate School of Journalism2013-14 Accreditation Self-StudyAccrediting Council on Education in Journalism

and Mass Communications

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Program Director Greg David (center) with Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Fellows

6 www.journalism.cuny.edu

Class of ’12 Lindsay Armstrong is a reporter at DNAInfo. Willis Arnold is arts and culture reporter at KWMU, St. Louis Public Radio. Carla Astudillo is data re-porter for NJ.com. Oulimata Ba is reporter/staff writer for HNGN.com. Vincent Balestriere is on-camera technology reporter at IBT Media. Martin Burch is data developer at The Wall Street Journal. Melissa Bykofsky is associate articles editor at Par-ents Magazine. Sean Carlson is anchor of All Things Considered at WDDE, Dover, Del. Ken Christensen is video journalist at Crain’s New York Business. Erin Horan is a broadcast associate at 60 Minutes. Menglin Huang is video editor at The Wall Street Journal, Beijing. Joseph Jenkins is senior editor at Football.com. Kevin Loria is health and science writer at Business Insider. Jennifer Marc is ju-nior editor at the World Weekly in London. Justin Mitchell is news assistant at WTOP News in Washington, D.C. Mariya Pylayeva is

a video journalist at Climate Nexus. Casey Quinlan is investing editor at U.S News and World Report. Patricia Rey Mallén is IT & telecommunications re-porter for Business News Americas in Mexico City. Alex Robinson is a reporter for Times Ledger Newspapers. David Sanchirico is assistant integra-tion producer at ESPN. Briggette Sayegh is news producer at WRNN-TV. Mary Shell is associate pro-ducer for ITV Studios. Chester Soria is a reporter for Metro New York. Joseph Stepansky is a police reporter for The NY Daily News. Julie Strickland is associate web editor for The Real Deal. Emma

Thorne is an associate producer at MSNBC. Kate Trafecante is associate producer at CNN Money. Vanesa Vennard is an as-sociate producer at MSNBC. Adam Warner is a web editor at NBC. Amanda Woods is a general assignment reporter for the Tribeca Trib.

Gabrielle Alfiero is a reporter at Straus News. Susan Armitage is deputy managing editor-inter-national at BuzzFeed. Ann Marie Awad is Morning Edition host and reporter at WRKF, an NPR station in Baton Rouge, La.. Shannon Ayala is a broadcast as-sociate at CUNY TV. Brianne Barry is a news assis-tant at NY1 News. Agata Blaszczak-Boxe is health/science editor at CBSnews.com. Erin Brodwin is a science reporter for Business Insider. Leeor Bronis is assistant publisher at Commentary magazine and contributor at PolicyMic. Kathleen Caulderwood is a reporter at International Business Times. Jeannie Choi is online news assistant at The New York Times. Casey Cipriani is an assistant editor at IndieWire. Kevin Convey is chairman of the Journalism Depart-ment at Quinnipiac University. Mary Eileen Croke is assistant producer for the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Kathleen Culliton is a reporter for The New York Post. Chris Dell has taken his GoBaller sports application to the Bizdom Cleveland accel-erator, NBA owner Dan Gilbert’s technology invest-ment firm. Alex Eidman is a producer for Think Out Loud, Oregon Public Broadcasting. Amy Eley is an associate editor at Today.com. Jillian Eugenios is special projects reporter at CNN Money. Emily Field is a reporter at Law360. Topher Forhecz is All Things Considered host at WGCU in Fort Myers, Fla. Craig Giammona is a reporter at Bloomberg News. Jessica Glazer is a reporter at Chalkbeat. Irina Ivanova is a health reporter at Crain’s New York Busi-ness. Eric Jankiewicz is a reporter for the Queens Courier. Sarah Khuwaja is a production assistant at CNN. Corrie Lacey is reporter at WCIA-Chan-nel 3 in Springfield, Ill. Anne Lagamayo is a video journalist at Fast Company. Dominique Lemoine Ulloa is a television columnist for Esquire Colom-bia. Laura Lorenzetti is a reporter at Fortune.com.

Heather Martino is working at Mashable. Ilie Mitaru is a producer at Peter Greenberg World-wide. Jonathan Moffie is a producer at Sports il-lustrated. Michalis Paterakis is a reporter at Insti-tutional Investor’s Money Management Intelligence. Matthew Perlman is a reporter at Brooklyn Paper. Sofia Perpetua is a video journalist at The New York Times. Fausto Pinto is a reporter at the Con-necticut Post. Nathan Place is a production as-sistant at AXS Lab. Elena Popina is a reporter at Bloomberg News. Maya Rajamani is a reporter at The Riverdale Press. Sophia Rosenbaum is a re-porter at The New York Post. Meredith Rosenberg is a web producer at Condé Nast Traveler. Lauren Rothman is a web producer at Food & Wine. Tobias Salinger is a reporter at the Commercial Observer. Gabrielle Sierra is a content curator at Facebook. Mikhael Simmonds is media manager at Seeds of Africa. John Sodaro is associate producer at Sports Illustrated. Sierra Leone Starks is web edi-tor and reporter at KTVA CBS 11 News in Anchor-age, Alaska. Sara Sugar is associate publisher at PinkNews. Matthew Surrusco is a copy editor at Truthout. Anna Teregulova is a video producer and editor for Above York LLC. Nadja Thomas is an assistant editor and production assistant at Trilogy Films. Danielle Valente is editorial assistant at RT Book Reviews. Divya Verma is a video producer at The Washington Post. Nicholas Wells is a re-searcher and web producer at Crain’s New York Business. Andrew Welsch is associate editor for On Wall Street at SourceMedia. Alex Wolf is a re-porter at Kent Island Bay Times and Queen Anne’s Record-Observer in Maryland. Dominik Wurnig is a data journalist at ORF Austrian Television. Elly Yu is producer/reporter at Georgia Public Broadcasting in Atlanta.

alumni news

Class of ’13

Chris Dell ’13

Heather Martino ’13

Jonathan Moffie ’13

Carla Astudillo ’12

Class of ’08Cristina Alesci moved to CNN as a correspondent. Stephen Bronner is contributors editor at Entrepreneur Media. Caitlin Drexler is a senior producer at Food & Wine. Allison Esposito is copy and marketing manager at Oyster. Lakshmi Gandhi is jobs and education editor at Metro US Newspaper. Rebecca Harshbarger is a police reporter at The New York Post. Francesca Levy is business education editor at Bloomberg Businessweek. Carl Winfield is editor for InfraAmericas, the North American mar-ket’s leading infrastructure finance intelligence provider, a subset of MergerMarket.

Class of ’07 Emily Keller is international data relations liaison at The Foun-dation Center. Tanzina Vega is a national correspondent cov-ering race and ethnicity at The New York Times. Nadia Zonis is research assistant at the Center for an Urban Future. n

inside story VOL. 8, NO. 1 FALL 2014 7

alumni news

Class of ’09 Aisha Al-Muslim is a business reporter covering retail and small businesses for Newsday and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Jenni Avins is lifestyle editor at Quartz. Damiano Beltrami is a language specialist at Facebook. Indrani Datta is website founder of Ackountable.com. Lois DeSocio is adjunct pro-fessor at Kean University. Anastasia Economides is confidential assistant to the masthead at The New York Times. Karina Ioffee is a reporter at the Bay Area News Group. Caroline Linton is news editor at amNewYork. Mark Morales is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Carla Murphy is a reporter/blogger at Colorlines.com. Michael Reicher is an investigative reporter at The Los Angeles Daily News. Joel Schectman is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal in Washington D.C. Rachel Senatore is editor of

amny.com at amNewYork. Mary Stachyra is writer/editor at CatholicHerald.com in Arlington, Va. She has also written a book about Centreville and Chantilly, Va., as part of the Images of America Series.

Mark Morales ’09

Collin Orcutt, ’09, coordinating producer for SI.com’s video team, proposes to fellow CUNY J-School alum Jordan Shakeshaft, ’10, editorial director at DailyBurn, in the Dominican Republic in December. They’re planning to

marry on June 6, 2015, in Brooklyn.

Class of ’11 Lisha Arino is a reporter for DNAInfo.com. Cesar Bustamante is a data journalist at Patch.com. Ian Chant is associate editor at IEEE Spectrum. Paul DeBenedetto is a Texas courts reporter for Law360 in Houston. Carmel Delshad is AJ+ journalism fellowship manager for AJ+Labs, Al Jazeera Network. Rebecca Douglas is associate producer at Ask Brooklyn at Bbox Radio. Brendaliss Gonzalez is a reporter at KSHB in Kansas City, Missouri. Zach Kussin is a real es-tate and travel reporter at The New York Post. Hannah Miet is a reporter at the Los Angeles Business Journal. An Phung is senior editor at Inc. Magazine. Eliza Ronalds-Hannon is Latin America reporter at Debtwire. Bianca Seidman is adjunct lec-turer in journalism and writing at Baruch College. Ashley Welch is health reporter for Health Matters with Dr. Sanjay Gupta at Everyday Health Inc.

Lisa Riordan Seville ’10

Simone Sebastian ’10

Class of ’10

Alex Abad Santos is a culture writer at Vox.com. Amy Berryhill MacMillan is global editor at frog in San Francisco. Courtney Carter is assignment editor at WRNN-TV. Danny Gold is head staff writer for Vice Media. Kerri MacDonald is a photo editor at The New York Times. Erin McCarthy is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Vishal Persaud is domain expert at News at Dat-aminr, Inc. Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan Seville raised money for a yearlong look at the legacy of 40 years of mass incarceration. Simone Sebastian is deputy editor of The Washington Post’s new digital mag-azine PostEverything.

Aisha Al-Muslim ’09

8 www.journalism.cuny.edu

CUNY Graduate School of Journalism219 W. 40th Street, Third FloorNew York, NY 10018

inside story

The lack of diversity in newsrooms continues to plague the journalism profession, even with all the new workplace opportunities presented by an influx of digital startups.

The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism is committed to combatting the problem. As the only publicly supported graduate journalism school in the Northeast, we are already one of the most

diverse in the country. This fall, for instance, students of color make up 42 percent of our entering class. But we want to do even more to fight the tired notion that the industry can’t find enough “good” mi-

nority journalists. Supported by a three-year, $1.2 million grant from the Knight Foundation, beginning in 2015 we will place 20 rising college seniors and recent graduates in two-month summer internships with media partners we line up. In addition, we will offer them digital media workshops taught by our faculty and cover their travel, housing and living expenses.

At the end of the summer, we will offer the top five students a commitment that if they apply and are accepted to any one of our three master’s degree programs, they can attend tuition-free. And in case they don’t want to go straight to graduate school from college, we’ll give them a two-year window to decide whether they want to take advantage of this opportunity.

To help market the program, we will partner with academic institutions known for their large population of talented minority journalism students. Examples are Hampton College, Morgan State University, Howard University, the University of Texas at El Paso – and of course, CUNY and SUNY.

We will also work closely with professional organizations such as the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) and the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) to identify prom-ising candidates.

We are fortunate to have someone on our staff to lead this exciting new initiative. Joanna Hernandez, who has been our director of career services for the past two years and is the NAHJ representative on the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC), is taking on this new role. We couldn’t be more excited for her – or for what this new initiative can do for the diversity of our school and the industry. n

Knight Grant of $1.2 Million to Fund New Diversity Initiative

Joanna Hernandez